Celebrating Saturnalia

Wow. Was that another Christmas day that had just gone by?

It used to be that you heard Christmas songs played almost everywhere, unconsciously humming the same tune over and over in your head as you went along doing your thing. And that’s in early October.

In the evenings, enterprising children would group together, ingeniously manufacture their makeshift musical instruments out of tin cans, cover the top with plastic, seal the edges with rubber band, look for a wooden stick, collect bottle caps stringing them together in a wire, then go on caroling from house to house—sometimes accompanied by their parents. What happened? Where are they? Nowadays, beggars have replaced the carolers.

Then there’s the “parol” or Christmas lanterns dexterously made out of art paper, sticks, cellophane and electric lights, either displayed proudly in front of every home or sold in every street corner. Or how about those vendor-hawkers who used to ply the middle of the street in droves selling the latest smuggled toy from China?

What about the usual tradition of neighbors and friends exchanging food viands then the next morning, returning the glass bowls, saucers, plates and Tupperware? And of course, those firecrackers that anxiously, if not prematurely, went off in early October? Nowadays they all go off in unison on December 31.

There are others but you get the idea. Austerity has certainly left its mark. It has made people stop and think. Take for instance Christmas day.

Before, it was widely thought that this was the birth date of Jesus Christ. No one knows when Christ was really born, yet December 25 has without question, been universally accepted as his date of birth. Nowadays, with the advent of various sources of free information, the internet among them, a growing number of spiritually enlightened people believe otherwise.

In ancient times, December 25 was actually an annual holiday of gift-giving and revelry held in honor of the Roman god, Saturn. It was only after Christianity became a religious-political force, and Emperor Constantine was forced to reconcile pagan, pantheist religion with Christianity, that it was decreed that Saturn be replaced by Jesus Christ as the new celebratory deity and December 25 as Jesus’ birth date; maintaining the tradition of public celebration, commercialism and gift-giving to appease the Roman pagans. This tradition was maintained through the centuries by Judeo-Christian institutions, particularly the Roman Catholic Church.

Of late, Bible scholars and astronomers have determined the birth date of Jesus Christ to have been somewhere between April 20 to 22; a good eight months prior to December 25. If this is the case, then why persist in doing something wrong and justify it as tradition?

And its not just Christmas day. Austerity has made us think, be aware and question what we have been doing; asking whether or not our premises, customs, traditions, and way of thinking have brought us into the present mess we’re in right now.

Relating that to the context of the subject matter at hand, many Filipino comics creatives right now have begun to be aware and question the present state of the Philippine comics scene. What has gone before, why it happened, what’s been done in its place by the new elitist, globalized “indie” custodians and backward thinking veteran traditionalists, why they’ve miserably failed for the last 15 years or so, why they’re still in a state of naïve, mass denial… it’s a guilty open secret. We don’t need to repeat THAT again. So in this season of hope and joy, is there any REAL reason to celebrate?

Awareness and destruction always precede change. The awareness phase is still ongoing. It is difficult and it musn’t let up if the kind of change some out there aspire to, is to arise. If you consider that as a sign of hope, then that is probably enough. Commence the rejoicing then. Celebrate Saturnalia if only for the briefest of moments and for the right reasons.

May God be with you.

A market for cheap, local newsprint comics outside NCR-Manila?

Though there has been a decline in book readership in 2007, again one should not rely solely and be misled by this single, general statement. If one cared to read and comprehend the details of the National Book Development Board 2007 survey, the following salient points would help us appreciate the existence of a potential market for local comics targeting the low-income 16 to 24 age group outside the National Capital Region (Manila):

1) “Book” in the 2007 NBDB survey, refers to two kinds: schoolbooks and non-schoolbooks (NSBs);

2) Though there has been an overall decrease of “book” readers, down 83% in 2007 from 90% in 2003, 96% of this 83% figure read more non-schoolbooks in 2007 when compared to only 76% in 2003. This means that more NSBs were read in 2007 than schoolbooks;

3) Overall, the percentage of NSB readers increased from 68% (76% of 90% book readers in 2003) to 80% (90% of 83% book readers in 2007).

4) The decrease in 2007 book readership is only confined to those living in the National Capital Region in Luzon where bookstores and libraries are concentrated. Provinces OUTSIDE the NCR, particularly in the rural areas of Visayas and Mindanao, experienced a DRAMATIC increase in readership.

5) Young people outside the NCR have begun to read NSBs at age 16 in 2007 and they come from the lower income class D and E. Those in the NCR and the upper income classes begin to read NSBs only at a much older age: 18.

6) Older people outside the 16 to 24 age group in all socio-economic classes, read less.

7) Top scorers in the popularity of NSBs are: Bible (67%) (38% in 2003), Romance (33%) (26%), Cooking (28%) (7%), Comic books (26%) (0%), and Religion/Religious/Inspirational (20%) (9%).

8) In 2003 when there was no significant readership for comic books, there is now a 26% readership. However, the survey observes that in 2007, public school students now read fewer books, newspapers, magazines, and comics than they did in 2003, and as for private school respondents, the slight increase in reading today is only among those reading comics.

9) As an aside, if you think those imported U.S. graphic novels and Japanese manga in book format were read by a wide readership in 2007, the NBDB survey says otherwise. To quote the report on the survey:

Whose books do Filipinos read?
In 2007, 46% of readers of non-school books read NSBs by Filipino authors only.
43% read NSBs by both Filipino authors and foreign authors.
9% read NSBs by foreign authors only.

10) Though there has been a rise of readership in the provinces outside the NCR mostly from young people aged 16 to 24 in the rural areas, there has been no change in the observation that Filipinos still prefer to get their printed reading matter for free as gifts (42%), borrowed from others (42%), read in the library (27%), bought (19%) and rented (18%).

This may be explained by the lack of access to reading materials in areas far from city centers.

The survey does not analyze the reasons why, but the research team offer some recommendations. “The challenge is for booksellers and publishers, printers and paper and ink manufacturers, to make more books affordable. The government can facilitate this, as well as the financing of technology upgrades to make operations more efficient and economical.”

It was also added that: “Authors are also challenged to write more books, not just to entertain, but also to inform, to teach the readers skills or to convey to them practical knowledge. Community libraries [should encourage] adults and out-of-school youth to like to read books; and educators, to teach students to read longer materials, such as books.”

Do today’s few local comics also inform, convey practical knowledge and inspire a reader to better oneself? Do they even appear frequently and are affordable to a great many low-income young readership so as to encourage the habit of reading good, literate comics at an early age? If the answer is in the negative, then a re-evaluation of priorities by comics creators and publishers living in Uranus is in order.

"Young People don't READ anymore" and other B.S.

The problem with a sweeping statement is that it’s a sweeping statement. It conveniently deals with careless generalizations that are not really true. The term “young people” for instance is general; broadly including all kinds of young people from age seven to twenty two, from any nationality, from any income class and from any period or generation. This is followed by the equally careless and general predicate: “don’t read anymore”.

Not reading anymore means a complete and total stoppage of abstracting and comprehending the meaning of words and symbols from any language, appearing on any text, chart, graph, flowchart, equation, formula, circuit, screen, computer monitor, book, pocketbook, newspaper, magazine and yes, even a printed comic book.

Putting them together and reviewing the whole poor excuse of an oxymoron: “YOUNG PEOPLE DON’T READ ANYMORE”, and another idiotic dictum has just been made--probably coming from some of those parochial, narrow-minded, unemancipated “young people” in the internet (or message board—take your pick). And its not surprising considering that a lot of these “young people” today don’t really READ anymore. Now THAT’s an oxymoron.

If any of it were indeed true, then millions of readers (young and old) of the “Da Vinci Code”, the Harry Potter books, Archie digests, various translations of the Bible (and Koran), English translated Shojo and Shonen manga, “Pera mo Palaguin Mo”, the entertainment gossip magazines, FHM magazine, discounted second-hand books and pocketbooks, Tagalog romance pocketbooks, “Bulgar” and other daily Tagalog newspaper tabloids, aren’t really reading at all(!)

The irony of it is that many globalized Filipino comics creators and publishers maintain this absurd dictum as gospel truth. Yet, while proclaiming that “young people don’t read anymore” they continue to publish or self-publish their expensive western or Japanese inspired comic books in low print runs, that appear irregularly and sold in a few imported comics specialty shops, bookstores, and other commercial urban establishments. Naturally, their works are not bought or read by a great many “young people” hence their claim that “young people don’t read anymore.”

Selling expensive, low print-run, glossy 32-paged superhero-action-fantasy comics in few comics/hobby specialty shops catering to the small "collector" market, is what is being done right now by mainstream American comics publishers. And what is the result? Sales and awareness by "young people" of the American comic book has gone down over the years forcing mainstream publishers like DC, Marvel and Dark Horse to use the internet in advertising their product; specifically by providing preview pages of their comics' latest issues in the internet, even providing for free, online reproductions of their past issues in an effort to stimulate sales and public awareness. Its the other way around. The internet did not bring comics down. U.S. comics did it to themselves when mainstream publishers like Marvel and DC ruined the fan-based direct market that saved them.

From: http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/11/13/comics.online.ap/index.%20html:

"LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Marvel is putting some of its older comics online Tuesday, hoping to reintroduce young people to the X-Men and Fantastic Four by showcasing the original issues in which such characters appeared.

Marvel Comics, and other comic book companies, are putting their product online.

It's a tentative move onto the Internet: Comics can only be viewed in a Web browser, not downloaded, and new issues will only go online at least six months after they first appear in print.

Still, it represents perhaps the comics industry's most aggressive Web push yet. Even as their creations -- from Iron Man to Wonder Woman -- become increasingly visible in pop culture through new movies and video games, old-school comics publishers rely primarily on specialized, out-of-the-way comic shops for distribution of their bread-and-butter product.

"You don't have that spinner rack of comic books sitting in the local five-and-dime any more," said Dan Buckley, president of Marvel Publishing. "We don't have our product intersecting kids in their lifestyle space as much as we used to."

Translate "kids' lifestyle space" into plain English and you get "the Internet." Marvel's two most prominent competitors currently offer online teasers designed to drive the sales of comics or book collections.

Dark Horse Comics now puts its monthly anthologies "Dark Horse Presents" up for free viewing on its MySpace site. The images are vibrant and large.

DC Comics has also put issues up on MySpace, and recently launched the competition-based Zuda Comics, which encourages users to rank each other's work, as a way to tap into the expanding Web comic scene. Company president Paul Levitz said he expects to put more original comics online in coming years. (DC Comics is a unit of Time Warner, as is CNN.)

"We look at anything that connects comics to people," Levitz said. "The most interesting thing about the online world to me is the opportunity for new forms of creativity. ... It's a question of what forms of storytelling work for the Web?"

For its mature Vertigo imprint, DC offers weekly sneak peeks at the first five or six pages of upcoming issues. The publisher also gives out downloadable PDF files of the first issues in certain series, timed to publication of the series in book or graphic novel format.

The Web release of DC's "Y the Last Man" sent sales of that book collection soaring at Bridge City Comics in Portland, Oregon, the shop's owner Michael Ring said.

"They really do tend to be feeder systems," Ring said of online comics. "They give people that initial taste."

For Marvel, the general public has often already gotten its initial taste through movies like "Spider-Man" or the "Fantastic Four" franchises.

The publisher is hoping fans will be intrigued enough about the origins of those characters to shell out $9.99 a month, or $4.99 monthly with a year-long commitment. For that price, they'll be able to poke through, say, the first 100 issues of Stan Lee's 1963 creation "Amazing Spider-Man" at their leisure, along with more recent titles like "House of M" and "Young Avengers." Comics can be viewed in several different formats, including frame-by-frame navigation.

Ring expects Marvel's effort to put a slight dent in the back-issue segment of the comic shop industry, where rare, out-of-print titles sell for hundreds of dollars on eBay and at trade shows.

Though most comic fans are collectors, some simply want to catch up on the backstory of their favorite characters and would no longer have to pay top dollar to do so.

About 2,500 issues will be available at launch of Marvel Digital Comics, with 20 more being released each week."

The highlighted paragraphs above hint and show that even the few comics collectors serviced by comics specialty shops are inconvenienced by high cover prices. It also shows that increase in sales could be attained if the standard comics format were exposed more to the non-comic collector, or the public at large and had reasonably low, affordable prices. Had these expensive, low print-run, 32 glossy paged mainstream comics been re-formatted and sold beyond the now dwindling comics specialty shops in the U.S., the fate of the standard U.S. mainstream comic would have been different.

Here in the Philippines, the same procedure is BLINDLY being followed. It starts with a false, misleading statement: “Young people don’t read anymore.” Followed by even more absurd claims: “Filipinos are into the internet now. So why bother making affordable newsprint comics in Tagalog? Nobody will read them. Let’s just create these westernized or Japanized classy-looking comics for a local upper income and international “global” audience who will pay us foreign exchange and we’ll all be rich.” Since 1992, globalized Filipino comics have been doing this but until now, no new industry based on their ideas has yet prospered or blossomed.

To add insult to injury, they cover-up their failure by proclaiming: “we can’t ever revive or make a new comics industry in this third world country ever again.” They then deliver the final blow: “let’s just be content in self-publishing “whatever” it is we love with all our hearts and to hell with what the public thinks or wants.” With that, a new “hobby” and “artform” was created for the elite, rich, westernized few to “love” and enjoy.

How many imported comics specialty shops do we have right now in the country? Less than a handful and they’re all concentrated in imperial Metro Manila. The same with the few bookstores and specialty bookstores. Yet, this is how globalized Filipino comics are being distributed. Is it not any wonder then why comics right now are a marginalized medium, mocked by many and supported by only a few cult comics collectors and a sympathetic few members of the academe as an “artform” ?

“Young people don’t read anymore.”

Are these the kinds of comics creators we have now? Making careless, poorly thought-out broad statements? Are they easily intimidated when confronted by long readable text? Do they often read just two or three paragraphs? Is that their limit? Do they have short attention spans? Is their education half-baked? Can’t they talk or think in straight English or Filipino? Why “tag-lish”? Are their thought processes often disjointed and disorganized?

Why do they often get ahead of themselves by second guessing; creatively pulling thoughts out of thin air and making unfounded, general assumptions? Are they really simple-minded, emotionally volatile, over-courteous, folksy-friendly, gullible artists? If the answer is yes to all of the above, then its no wonder their comics works aren’t read and appreciated by a great many people.

How to make great, new Tagalog comics affordable to the general public of low-income Filipinos? Forget it. That’s old school. That kind of cheap, low-quality newsprint comics is too “alien” and should only be sold in the far-off planets of Mars or Jupiter. Ah, but Mars and Jupiter are not the issue here, are they? Rather, the conundrum facing us is why keep on making globalized Filipino comics for the limited, exclusive consumption of that self-indulgent, narcissistic world of URANUS?

Direct market or newsstand distribution for Philippine Comics?

The direct market of mainstream comics distribution in the U.S. may not be selling as much due to high cover prices, severe reduction in number of comics specialty shops and the distribution business monopolized by only one comics distributor: Diamond Distributors, but it is a relief to know that there are some mainstream comics titles that are NOT sold in the direct market and, are doing better. We find them, of all places, in the newsstand market.

We are talking about the “Archie” mainstream comics line. From the “Comics worth reading” blog by Johanna Draper Carlson and friends (at http://comicsworthreading.com/2008/01/20/archie-sales-figures/) we find that Archie Comics is the only major mainstream comics publisher that still publishes its Statements of Ownership, Management, and Circulation, a U.S. post office requirement for the use of certain mail classes. This public disclosure is the primary source of circulation information for Archie.

The Archie comics line publishes two types of comics formats for the newsstand market: 32 page single issues (i.e., Archie, Archie and Friends, Betty, Betty and Veronica, Betty and Veronica Spectacular, Jughead, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Sonic the Hedgedog) and the thick 96 to 192 page digest format issues (i.e., Archie Digest, Archie Double Digest, Archie’s Pals and Gals Double Digest, Betty and Veronica Digest, Jughead and Friends Digest, Jughead’s Double Digest, and Tales from Riverdale Digest).

As of February, 2008, the circulation of Archie single issues nearest filing date are: Sonic the Hedgedog (34,696 copies), Archie (28,885 copies), Betty and Veronica (18,083 copies), Betty (13, 295 copies), Archie and Friends (13,143 copies), Jughead (12,319 copies), Sabrina the Teenage Witch (12,029) and Betty and Veronica Spectacular (11,457 copies).

The circulation numbers for the Archie single issues approximate the best-selling DC and Marvel comics titles distributed by Diamond in the direct market. However, when we look at the circulation figures nearest filing date for the Archie Double Digests, we see them doing better than the single issues: Betty and Veronica Double Digest (108,354 copies), Archie’s Double Digest (104,056 copies), Archie’s Pals and Gals Double Digest (98,753 copies), Archie Digest (96,788 copies), Jughead’s Double Digest (91,261 copies), Betty and Veronica Digest (61,628 copies), Tales From Riverdale Digest (59,486), and Jughead and Friends Digest (48,842 copies).

Draper Carlson and friends make the following observation and explanation of why this is so:

“As expected, the digests do better than the comic-format titles, and the bigger books are more popular than the smaller. Digests are 96 pages for $2.59; double digests are 192 for $3.69, making them the best deal out there in newsstand comics, especially now that DC and Marvel are pushing the $3.99 barrier (for 32 pages, usually with “upgraded” cover). The top-selling digest sells roughly three times the top-selling comic, and in issues, Sonic sells 6-7,000 more than the top Archie book.” (Emphasis Ours)

One will also note that unlike the highly specialized and expensive mainstream comics of the direct market, the ARCHIE comics line are still printed in “cheap” newsprint paper, contain really amusing storylines for their type of audience, do not have fancy computer colored covers or interiors, contain reprints, are ubiquitous and are reasonably low-priced. Add to this the fact that ARCHIE’s comics line are distributed mostly in newsstands, drugstores, supermarkets, toy stores, gas stations, transport terminals and other high traffic commercial establishments in the U.S. that are not closed clubhouse hangouts for comic geeks, and you have a successful comics publishing business unaffected by the now shrunk direct market, or the rise of alternative electronic and interactive entertainment media.

Is it not any wonder then that the Archie comics digests are America’s possible answer to the best-selling, reasonably priced or “cheap”, book formatted, and widely distributed Japanese Shonen and Shojo manga?

There is hope beyond the self-enclosed direct market. To survive, mainstream comics publishers have aggressively entered the U.S. bookstore market by reprinting their single issue comics formats into expensive trade paperback compilations being passed off as respectable “graphic novels”. And as shown in the previous entry, their foray into this new distribution channel has resulted in a $375 million graphic novel market, outpacing the slow moving Japanese manga. The circulation of these trade paperbacks is still unknown, but with their high prices it can be reasonably, if not safely, assumed where the $375 million increase came from.

But seeing as how mainstream comics publishers, particularly Marvel and DC, have been known to ultimately destroy their distribution systems, i.e., the newsstands in the 1970s and the direct market in the 1990s, is it not too farfetched to consider the same fate happening again in this new bookstore distribution system? Many seem to think so.

These publishers also face the predicament that the newsstand market still adheres to the dreaded Comics Code Authority requiring comics publications to be “wholesome” and “family friendly” like Archie’s comics line.

By going into the direct market in the 1980s and ignoring the Comics Code Authority, mainstream comics publishers have ventured into writing more intelligent and challenging material for their niche’ audience of older, hardcore comics enthusiasts. The material however, would be considered inappropriate and sometimes offensive when brought into the conservative newsstand market that still adheres to the Comics Code Authority.

Yet, there have been attempts to re-enter the newsstands as shown by the “wholesome” newsprint single issues of DC and Marvel’s cartoon shows and child versions of their superhero characters, i.e., Marvel Adventures, X-Men, Superman Adventures, Batman the Animated Series, Batman Beyond, The Batman, Superfriends, Supergirl, Justice League Unlimited, Spider-Man, Krypto the Super Dog, Looney Tunes and Legion of Super Heroes. The re-entry has been slow, cautious, and the word is still out on the results of this maneuver.

Meanwhile, in the backwaters of the Philippine comics scene, so-called “indie” or "globalized" male dominated comics creators still emulate the American direct market distribution model. Expensive, mostly in English, using high priced book or glossy paper, low circulation, essentially following stereotype superhero, action or fantasy concepts and storylines of U.S. and Japanese mainstream cartoons and comics, focusing mostly in the illustrative aspects of the medium, Pinoy globalized "indies" sell their wares in the few handful of imported comics specialty shops in Manila, an annual “Komikon” held in an ivory tower University, 200 or so branches of National Bookstore, a few high end book and magazine shops, and college/ university stores. Many doubt whether sales of these “indie” globalized Filipino comics publications actually provide some livelihood to the establishments selling them. But the “indie” elitist creators do not care. They’re not businessmen. They’re “artists”. They just “love” what they do and that’s all that matters. To hell with reciprocity.

At a time when we do not have a local comics code authority like the Roces managed KPPKP Code regulating the creation of comics works, when our local newsstands are boringly dominated by newspapers and songhits magazines, the opportunity to create new, indigenous, exciting pieces of comics literature affordable to a great many people is set aside by “indies” and narrow-minded publishers for reasons of artistic ego and a perceived quick buck in the high-end niche’ market.

Has an industry risen in the last 15 years since the westernized “indie” comics came to the fore? Some seem to think so but many doubt the claim when we compare their paltry achievements with what was accomplished by a local comics industry of yesteryear.

Why their aversion to the newsstand market? Why their reluctance to print their black and white works of art in newsprint? Why their seeming inability to write in Tagalog and be original for a change? Why their seeming ignorance of the fact that with the great sum expended by them in the printing of an issue of their expensive black and white book paper comics, they could get two issues of that in newsprint, and in color from some newspaper printers open to sub-contracting work? Why their reluctance to actually “work” and be serious in putting out their product on schedule without compromising its quality? Why this seeming lackadaisical, laid-back bohemian attitude?

The problem, it seems, is not the prevalence of television, the internet, radio, cellphones or a depressed economy. It is a question of priorities, orientation, competence and the will to actively create a local comics industry which is sadly not part of the agenda of the players in this present vacuum of creative activity they inhabit.